Desideratum

What I’m really wondering is what makes some writers special. Like when I was a kid on the London Underground, I’d stare at the people around me. And every now and again I’d notice someone who had been drawn - a William Morris beauty, a Berni Wrightson grotesque - or someone who had been written - there are lots of Dickens characters in London, even today. It wasn’t those writers or artists who accurately recorded life: the special ones were the ones who drew it or wrote it so personally that, in some sense it seemed as if they were creating life, or creating the world and bringing it back to you. And once you’d seen it through their eyes you could never un-see it, not ever again. There are a few writers who are special. They make the world in their books; or rather, they open a window or a door or a magic casement, and they show you the world in which they live.